Sometimes You Just Have to Bang Your Fist on the Table

During our wonderful Thanksgiving feast aboard Maluhia, I inadvertently scratched my left ear and immediately felt a sickly wetness on my hand. Meryl looked up startled as blood was dripping out of my ear lobe. She got some paper towels which quickly soaked through. I’d had a tiny red spot on the ear for a couple of months, but it was nothing of any concern. Now it was bleeding profusely. Somehow we got it under control and somewhat embarrassingly finished our dinner.

The next day the same thing happened. It didn’t hurt, but I was concerned by the amount of blood. Given my scare with a melanoma two years earlier and the admonition of my dermatologist that this stuff can be serious, I decided to see a doctor. Now that would be a simple task in Seattle, but on a remote South Pacific Island it is another issue. There was a small clinic in Atuona, but it was staffed only by a nurse, the doctor being away at a neighboring island. There was a private doctor, but he would only tell me I needed to see a dermatologist in Papeete. Since we actually had medical repatriation insurance, I decided to contact them to see about a quick flight to Tahiti. That’s when my life got complicated.

In French Polynesia, there are four ways to make contact with the outside world. One is phone. We have a French SIM card in our phone and use “recharge cards” to add time to the phone. A call to the US runs about $5 a minute, meaning that any lengthy call will quickly exhaust the credit balance on the card. This means you have to have lots of recharge cards in your possession and be ready for your call to simply end in mid sentence when the credit runs out. 

The second choice is satellite phone. We actually have two of these on the boat. The problem we were anchored in a narrow harbor surrounded by towering mountain peaks, making voice contact difficult at best. Sometimes it works great (if a satellite happens to be overhead), but most times it’s just an exercise in frustration. 

The third way is to use the satellite system to send an email. This is more reliable, but you can only send text-based messages. Also, all those messages reside on our Windows-based navigation computer (which is built into the boat and not portable).

The most beautiful Internet cafe in the world.

The fourth method is to use your laptop computer and hook up to the Internet. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. To get Internet we have two options:  1) walk about ¼ mile up to an lookout over the ocean where the volunteer “Saviors of the Sea” (French rescue service) has a small hut with Internet access. For $5 you can sit (looking out at the most beautiful view in the world) and do Internet until the power on your laptop runs out (about 2 hours). If there are a lot of cruisers doing the same thing, the speed drops to almost nothing. The other choice is to walk three miles into town and go the local tattoo parlor/restaurant/Internet cafe. That costs $5 per hour, but you can plug into power (and watch guys get tattooed if you get bored).

I will spare you the full litany of my experience, but instead offer a little taste of the levels of frustration cruisers get while trying to contact the US for parts, medical, financial, etc. assistance. My first strategy was to go up to the Life Saving Signal Station and try to access the Internet. Unfortunately they are only open when volunteer staff are available and it was closed when I got there. Walked back to the dock, dinghied back to the boat and began to get frustrated (remember you are doing all this in a hot, blazing sun). I then decided to send a sat phone email to insurance company and eventually got a hold of them, but the reception kept cutting out (those pesky mountains again). I suggested we use email but they insisted on a phone call. Phone reception is not good at the boat, so got in the dingy, went to the dock, walked up to the Signal Station (now open) and hooked up to the Internet.

As frosting on the cake, I got a fraud warning from my credit card company that our most frequently used card had been compromised (someone was racking up charges online) and for me to call immediately. I called on my French cell phone and began my near decline into insanity dealing with young customer support people sitting in nice warm offices who are clueless about the world. Upon reaching a person—and before going through all the security questions —I tried to explain the situation (I’m on a boat on a remote South Pacific Island with no facilities, etc. using a phone whose time would run out shortly . . .). I learned they had no ability to absorb any of this and began asking me a long list of security questions, and then transfer me to someone else who began the same script (with me offering the same admonishments) over again. 

This precipitated my first fist pound to the table, startling everyone sitting around the table and making me look like an idiot. Naturally the phone cut out mid way through all this (costing me about $30) and forcing me to Plan Two: contacting the bank via their web site. With a slow Internet connection this resulted in a second fist bang as their “secure email system” took forever to load. I left an email message (with all the “remote Pacific Island” admonishments) telling them the only way to contact me was through my sat phone email system (which I can use only on the boat and which they refused to use). The result of all of this was they cancelled our most frequently used credit card (and the one that we use for all our automatic payments online) and said they would mail a replacement to us (I will spare you the details of that conversation).

Since our four other credit cards had been reissued over the last several months and were sitting at our mail forwarding service in Florida, that left us with a single credit card to use if I had to fly to Tahiti. It also forced me to go to various web sites (small fist bang) to change the billing credit card of many of our auto payments for various services we use (including the one to pay the monthly bill on the sat phone time). Again, imagine doing this with an extremely slow Internet connection while watching the battery on your computer getting to 15%, then 10% . . . (Head bang to table, with everyone convinced you are totally bonkers.)

The next email I opened was from Wells Fargo Bank informing me that the last valid credit card I had in my possession was being reissued since Wells Fargo was switching from MasterCard to Visa (large fist bang resulting in no one sitting at table any more). The new card had already been mailed to our Florida mail service. I’m really starting to lose it at this point.

I email my dear friend Anni Johnson for another in a long list of favors: can I have all the credit cards forwarded to her in Florida and she can ship using her airline discount to Nuka Hiva, our next port of call? As usual, she did this efficiently and without question, reducing the shipping bill from $160 (for four small #10 envelopes) to $65. Anni, you are the best!

Now it was time to deal with the insurance company again. After contacting them via email they insisted on a phone call. I called using the sat phone but they could only hear about every third word, so I switched to the French cell phone (now recharged with another $30 worth of time). They were adamant that I go to the local clinic and get a full “medical work up” before sending me to a specialist in Papeete. Again, every time I dealt with them I got a different person who had to learn the whole “remote South Pacific Island and limited cell phone time” story over again. 

I did walk the three miles to town, found the clinic, went in to find the doctor gone on another island, and having the nurse say (imagine French-accented poor English here) “You have zee red spot on zee ear. You need to zee a dermatologist in Papeete.” As far as getting a “full medical workup,” that wasn’t going to happen since they felt if I could walk the three miles to the clinic I was probably OK.

Again, I will spare you the agonizing details (and about 10 more fist bangs to the table), but the gist of the story was the insurance company finally OK’d me being flown to Tahiti. The problem was they could get me there but not get me back for another ten days since the Festival des Arts was taking place on Hiva Oa and every in-bound plane had been overbooked for the last four months.  The thought of staying in Papeete at $300/day for ten days over Christmas resulted in a big fist bang. 

I finally got a photo of my ear to my dermatologist in Seattle who said 1) this isn’t something that’s going to kill you (like a melanoma), 2) you do have to see a dermatologist, 3) but there’s no immediate rush. I did get the insurance company to compromise and send me on Dec. 22 with a return flight on Dec. 24th, but with their admonishment that if any after care was needed the airfare was all at my expense.

The moral of this story is that Catch-22 and “you can’t get there from here” are well and alive on remote South Pacific islands. It’s the price we pay for living this eclectic  lifestyle. Ironically, the trip to Papeete went fairly smoothly, resulting in a minor medical procedure on my ear, some great Christmas presents for Meryl, and me picking up a 10 ft. inflatable stand-up paddle board that I brought back on the plane with me. 

I sometimes I think this lifestyle is all a huge test of one’s perseverance, patience, and tolerance, and most all, a reminder of all the resources you have available while sitting in your comfortable house or office in the US when you need to deal with issues. At least you don’t need to begin each sentence with . . . “OK, you’ve got to listen closely. I’m on a boat anchored off a remote South Pacific Island with no Internet and extremely expensive cell phone service that will cut-off shortly and . . . click.”